Monday, December 17, 2007

Just waking up to the shocking news that singer and songwriter Dan Fogelberg has passed away from cancer at the age of 56.

Admittedly not familiar with all of Dan's work, I fell in love with "Same Old Lang Syne" the first time I ever heard it! It's such a great song. Check it out if you get the chance.

(Of course, I'm a total Christmas guy — my buddy Pete even went so far as to call me "Mr. Christmas" in a recent Poughkeepsie Journal story — but this song is so much more than a Christmas tune.)

I made it a point to include "Same Old Lang Syne" on one of my very first "Christmas Celebra-Sean" compilation CDs that I send out with my Christmas cards each November. (Yes, I send out my cards the Monday or Tuesday before Thanksgiving so people get them Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, and I get to be everyone's first!)

So if you listen to the radio today, particularly all those great stations that play nothing but Christmas songs 24/7 this time of year, and you hear "Same Old Lang Syne" today, take a sec and think of Dan Fogelberg, the man who brought us this classic.

PROFILE

A sports reporter for the Poughkeepsie Journal since September 2000, Sean has covered everything from the World Series to the NCAA tournament.
In 2005, officials with the New York State Associated Press named Sean both the top sports columnist and the top sports feature writer in the state for newspapers the Journal's size.
A 1996 graduate of the State University of New York College at New Paltz, Sean worked for a weekly newspaper out of college before moving on to the Rutland (VT) Herald, where he covered sports. Sean is also the Journal's beat writer for the short-season Class A Hudson Valley Renegades and the basketball programs at Marist College.